About Me

Known principally for his weekly political columns and his commentaries on radio and television, Chris Trotter has spent most of his adult life either engaging in or writing about politics. He was the founding editor of The New Zealand Political Review (1992-2005) and in 2007 authored No Left Turn, a political history of New Zealand. Living in Auckland with his wife and daughter, Chris describes himself as an “Old New Zealander” – i.e. someone who remembers what the country was like before Rogernomics. He has created this blog as an archive for his published work and an outlet for his more elegiac musings. It takes its name from Bowalley Road, which runs past the North Otago farm where he spent the first nine years of his life. Enjoy.

Bowalley Road Rules

The blogosphere tends to be a very noisy, and all-too-often a very abusive, place. I intend Bowalley Road to be a much quieter, and certainly a more respectful, place.
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These are based on two very simple principles:
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Followers

Wednesday, 14 November 2012

Ms O'Sullivan's Curious Commentary

Not Stupid: Fran O'Sullivan is one of New Zealand's most experienced journalists. What, then, lies behind her rather odd analysis of David Shearer's political options at this weekend's Labour Party Conference?

LET’S BEGIN with the headline: “Shearer’s vision can unite Labour”.
That’s what the Herald’s subs called
this morning’s opinion piece by Fran O’Sullivan. It sounded hopeful, but it
didn’t take me very long to realise that Ms O’Sullivan was actually urging Mr
Shearer to do exactly the opposite:

“He should not be afraid
to upset grassroot Labour Party members this weekend – particularly the
anonymous bloggers who get far too much attention.

“Shearer should make
it clear he has not resiled from the vision he put forward in Parliament soon
after his colleagues voted him leader. That vision is more likely to capture
middle-class votes than simply playing to ‘our people’.”

Now, I’ve known Ms O’Sullivan for many years, and one thing
she isn’t is stupid. On the face of it, however, her column in this morning’s Herald was just that: stupid.

Why would any credible political commentator advise a party
leader installed over the objections of his own rank-and-file to roll up to his
first party conference and piss them off all over again? Why would she suggest
that his policy announcements be directed not at “our people” (i.e. the party’s
electoral base) but at middle-class voters whose most distinguishing political characteristic
over the past four years has been their open contempt and hostility towards the
poor and the marginalised?

Does this veteran business journalist have some special insight
into this country’s political machinations which allows her to confidently
brush aside the rank-and-file of the Labour Party as irrelevant to the outcome
of the next general election? In spite of the recent US presidential election
demonstrating just how important an effective “ground game” has become to securing
victory, Ms O’Sullivan feels able to reassure Mr Shearer that he can safely ignore
the very people who make an effective “ground game” possible. Why is that?

Perhaps the answer lies in her prediction that playing to
the prejudices of the middle-class rather than “our people” would “also yield
good results for New Zealand’s economy and business”. Perhaps she envisages the
business audiences (to which Mr Shearer – a “fiscal conservative” – is said to
have so much appeal) digging deep into their pockets to finance a campaign that
would allow the Leader of the Opposition to make an end-run around his own
membership?

That would certainly seem to be the strategic thinking
behind both Ms O’Sullivan’s and Mr Shearer’s references to the former Finnish
prime minister, Esko Aho.

“[H]e thought it was more important to make a difference
than to get re-elected”, Mr Shearer is quoted as saying. “I can tell you I have no interest
in being a prime minister who just cautiously tinkers.”

And it is here, I believe, that we come to the heart of Ms O’Sullivan’s
thinking about Mr Shearer and the sort of Labour Government he might lead. The
template in use is, of course, the one bequeathed to us by the Fourth Labour
Government.

The Labour Party that gave us “Rogernomics” will always enjoy the
special affection of neoliberals like Ms O’Sullivan. Not only for implementing
policies that a conservative government would have had to introduce at the
point of a gun, but for destroying both the Labour Party and the labour movement
in the process.

The Lange-Douglas government corrupted everything it touched
– including the MPs and party officials who opted to remain inside the empty
shell Labour had become after three-fourths of its members – including the
best and brightest of its left-wing heart – had departed in disgust. Helen
Clark and her enablers may not have been neoliberals, but nor were they prepared to confront or repudiate the neoliberalism which the Lange-Douglas partnership
had made the default setting of “New Zealand’s economy and business”.

In the nine long years it took Labour (with Jim Anderton’s
Alliance in support) to claw its way back to the treasury benches, the trade
union movement, as an effective counterweight to corporate power, had been destroyed
and the state bureaucracy purged of its civil service ethic. And yet, after nine long years of Labour rule, the countervailing democratic powers of these crucial institutions remained unrestored.

It is this seeming inability (or is it unwillingness?) to challenge
the neoliberal establishment with something more robust and modern (Josie
Pagani take note) than a reheated Blairism which lies at the root of the Labour
Party’s (as opposed to the Labour Caucus’s) restiveness. It explains the party
membership's endorsement, by a margin of two-to-one, of David Cunliffe's candidacy
last December.

Alone among his caucus colleagues Mr Cunliffe grasps how profoundly the
global financial crisis is changing the nature of the political-economic game. In response (and in marked contrast to his boss) he's increasingly willing to publicly challenge the dominant neoliberal paradigm. Mr Cunliffe’s popularity among rank-and-file Labour members reflects the wider societal hunger for a genuine alternative to what is clearly a failing system.

It is also, I suspect, why even Ms O’Sullivan (who, as I
said, is not stupid) writes: “[I]t is abundantly clear that Cunliffe would make
a much more compelling Opposition leader than Shearer. He is hard-headed. He
has been politically blooded. He has Cabinet experience. He is in tune with
Labour’s base.”

So it is Mr Cunliffe’s – not Mr Shearer’s – vision that can
unite Labour. Isn’t that what Ms O’Sullivan’s column is really saying? And isn’t
that why she and all her right-wing colleagues in the mainstream news media are
so determined that he NOT replace the incumbent? Isn’t that why they are
talking-up Ms Pagani? Isn’t that why they’re begging Labour’s members to give
Mr Shearer “more time”?

A Labour-led Government headed by the man who takes
inspiration from the right-wing Esko Aho; the man who has no interest in being a
leader who “cautiously tinkers”; the man who thinks it’s “more important to
make a difference than get re-elected”; would be a government hell-bent on
repeating the devastating mistakes of the 1980s.

Not only that, it would be a government which left what’s
left of the Left as demoralised and divided as the government which, in the six
bitter years between 1984 and 1990, tore New Zealand’s social-democratic
society to pieces.

"the government which, in the six bitter years between 1984 and 1990, tore New Zealand’s social-democratic society to pieces."Yes, Chris, they were bitter years indeed. It's still painful to recall the betrayal of everything Labour had striven for over one's lifetime.

I suspect Fran is starting to lose it, she is very supportive of Chinese purchasing our assets re crafar farms and nek minute she is suggesting that a consortium of Kiwi's get together to purchase F&P, huh. She is what is called in marketing circles, a slow adopter (and a mixed up one at that).

It's interesting Chris that you still allow someone who logs in as 'anonymous' to describe Fran O'Sullivan as 'a tiresome nitwit' where exactly is the debating point in that comment? He/she then goes to call into question Farn's motivation. Is this the best commenst you can command?

At Last, the leader of the Labour Party has been inadvertently exposed by Fran O'Sullivan. David Shearer is actually a right wing mole from the round table. David Shearer is a rampant capitalist, a neo-liberalist ideologue implanted into the heart of the left. His mission is too make sure Labour is just National in disguise and create divisions and disunity in the entire grass roots Labour movement and in so doing destroy it.

Comparing Cunliffe to Lange doesn’t work. Cunliffe, as the post suggests, saw the opportunity presented by the fallout from the financial crisis and tried to redefine the political argument. Presented with the chance for leadership, he couldn’t persuade 16 of his colleagues to support him. And it isn’t because there are too many neo-liberals in the caucus – the right is just as venal, ambitious and wiling to subdue principal for the lure of office as any other faction. Cunliffe can’t get his colleagues to like him or believe in him. His look-alike is Anderton between 1984 and 1989 – all the ideas but couldn’t instil his parliamentary colleagues with the courage or confidence to trust him. The result will probably be similar.

True overall, anon1103; just hastily making the narrow point that Lange was similarly able to "kick tory ass in a debate" and that picking the leader with the greater rhetorical skills doesn't necessarily lead to heaven. As we know to this very day.

It's the entire caucus that needs the red-hot poker of the blogosphere - and of the entire membership. And that can only come from the kind of sound structure that the Alliance council (ok and Jim) refused to countenance, and which Lab has the golden opportunity to found this very week.

Cunners or Shearer is secondary: and with the overweening influence of the media still rampant - and Cunners presenting an easier target - IMHO Shearer with a red-hot poker appropriately inserted has the greater potential to either by-pass the scribes or woo them - and the membership.

But whatever whichway happens in coming weeks, it's Unity, stupid. Watch the polls if this continues. If forgiveness can't be found, and the troops inspired (yes, a la the early Alliance), it's continuing tory hell for us all.

I am in quite a unique position to judge Cunliffe and Lange. I was on Lange's LEC for a number of years and both of my parents were former chairs of the LEC. I have also been on Cunliffe's LEC ever since he was elected.

Cunliffe and Lange both have a fearsome intellect. But Lange's weakness was that he was sloppy and left the running of things up to others. Cunliffe is way more a Helen Clark than a David Lange in terms of control and management.

Also Lange was not strong in economics and left it all to Douglas to the detriment of us all, whereas Cunliffe will take a hands on approach to things.

And they were both religious, Cunliffe is the son of a Minister and Lange was heavily involved in the Methodist Church. They were both heavily influenced by Christian ideals as were many of the first Labour Government.

As someone who also remembers the years before 'Rogernomics' I find it curious that few people recall to mind the malevolent influence of Robert Muldoon. The great keeper of the 'nanny state' in its many guises.

We were told we were deeply indebted and, in exchange for the sale of a few trifles - Railways, who employed those appalling ferry people who always went on strike for the school holidays, and Ministry of Works and Development whose people worked in Gangs! and built clunky things that lasted, some other things, we could leave behind the colonial and dominion days (with all the cronyism around overseas funds and buying cars) and be Modern. At Last!

It was all good - until October 1987 - and we've been either repenting or sitting around the airstrips waiting for Cargo to arrive ever since.

And Labour lost the plot. 'They came for the old European Commie union rabble rousers - but I wasn't one of Them'. Oh dear me no! I just took my annual increment - a natural reward for hanging about on the job - and sneered at those unionist fools who had risked to go for a Greedy Pay Rise. Nasty.

And that false superiority has increased year on year. 'We're not like that! My boss is great. S/he just can't afford to let me have a pay rise in These Hard Economic times.'

And most unions let it happen. A collective betrayal. A persistent unwillingness to adapt to reality. To remind those new-minted Citizens of the Real World that, if they could be fired they were still workers, still vulnerable to the demands of enterprises, still optional and disposable at whim.

A lack of some fine trait that coulda shoulda swished Prebble and Co from their perches before the rot became the norm and the Lotto mentality settled in.

For me both Shearer and Cunliffe and the majority of the Opposition have failed because they have no vision that is better than Muldoon's, or Douglas's.

And they've all failed because they simply cannot stop themselves making useless awful laws to 'prove they're worth their pay and perks.

It's the work of the people to realise the vision. It's the work of the government to balance powers - as felicitously as possible. And that hasn't happened for decades.